Designing the Urban Commons: Deadline extended to 4th May

Designing the Urban Commons is an ideas competition calling for new ways to stimulate the city’s public and collective life, organised by Theatrum Mundi and launched on 25th March 2015. Entry to the competition is free, online, open to anyone, and invites diverse teams to work together. Architects, community organisers, performers, artists and activists for example, and even ordinary citizens, are all encouraged to take part.

The competition brief will ask teams to transform existing land, architecture, or infrastructures, in neighbourhoods across London, into common spaces, or to carve out new urban commons either as physical places or online. Commons are not static pieces of architecture; we are seeking designs through which the social act of commoning could take shape, by enabling citizens to co-produce urban resources from culture & knowledge to housing, energy or democratic processes.

The ten winning proposals will be awarded £300. The winning schemes will be exhibited in June simultaneously at the LSE as part of the London Festival of Architecture and in Berlin as part of the MakeCity Festival. The winners will also be invited to present their visions to the public at the V&A’s Friday Late in June.